A municipal court judge has dismissed theft charges against Deputy Gloucester County Administrator Michelle Coryell over the objection of the victim.
Coryell was accused of stealing documents from an aide to a Republican county commissioner in June. She allegedly picked up a handful of documents from a shared printer; a surveillance video shows her taking photographs of those documents with her cell phone inside an elevator.
Westville Municipal Prosecutor Gary Lomanno said the documents Coryell allegedly stole were public records from a government office.
“Honestly, I didn’t see a whole lot here in discovery to go forward,” said Lomanno, a veteran political appointee who has donated thousands to Democratic candidates. “These are public records that were taken. Yes, they were taken when somebody printed them.”
Lomanno said the records included guides to ballot drop boxes and the design of interior ballot storage containers.
“These again were all public documents,” he said. “This is de minimus at best. If anything, the paper belongs to the county. It’s printed on a county copier. The defendant is a county employee. She is a supervisor at the county. What was taken was just reprinted. Anybody could obtain this.”
But the victim, Courtney Bracken, a confidential aide to County Commissioner Chris Konawel, pushed back on Lomanno’s characterization after the prosecutor told Westville Municipal Court Judge Thomas North that the information could be obtained under the state’s Open Public Records Act.
Bracken said the information she printed was “completely unredacted.” She told North that she was investigating irregularities in ballot pickups after receiving a constituent tip that Gloucester County was allowing two people from the same party to pick up ballots from droboxes.
According to Bracken, the names of the election officials assigned to pick up ballots would be redacted from the public, along with scheduled pickup times.
“Coryell took the documents that I printed out, and then, with this election, magically, the issues that were occurring on the election we were investigating suddenly disappeared,” said Bracken.
Lamanno said Coryell’s case was scheduled to be sent to the Gloucester County Prosecutor’s office, which cited conflict and sent it to Salem; eventually, it made its way to Burington.
North said he was dismissing the charge based on Lammano’s representation that he could not prove the allegations against Coryell beyond a reasonable doubt. He issued an expungement order as well.
Coryell was the longtime chief of staff to Senate President Steve Sweeney before he lost his bid for re-election in 2021. Sweeney is now the Gloucester County Administrator and Democratic county chairman.
Her attorney, Ryan Kelley of Brown & Connery, had argued that the theft was de minimus.
